Team Details

DR. CHRISTIAN REGOBETH KOFI AHORTOR, DIRECTOR OF RESEARCH AND MACROECONOMIC MANAGEMENT DEPARTMENT, WAIFEM
Dr. Christian R. K. Ahortor was appointed the Director of Research and Macroeconomic Management Department, effective February 1, 2024, and assumed office on the same
date. Dr. Ahortor brings onboard diverse experiences from the academia and professional world. At the time of joining the West African Institute for Financial and Economic Management (WAIFEM), Dr. Ahortor had over 28 years of working experience, made up of overlapping 22 years of research experience and nine years of teaching experience.
He spent over seven years at the Bank of Ghana, attaining the position of Assistant Director and working in three different departments – the Economics Department, the
Governors’ Department, and the Research Department. Dr. Ahortor conducted empirical studies and made presentations to the Monetary Policy Committee as a
Balance of Payments analyst. He also led a team to develop a Policy Reference Manual for the Bank and designed a Monitoring Template to track the performances of the
various Departments and Regional Offices on the Bank’s 2018-2022 Strategic Plan (STAR 2022). At the Research Department, he was the Head of the Statistics and
Publications Unit and was also drafting and reviewing technical documents to support the Bank’s Management and the Monetary Policy Committee. In six of the over seven
years spent at the Bank, Dr. Ahortor was a member of the Bank’s Editorial Committee and served as its secretary for the most part. Throughout his stay at the Bank, Dr.
Ahortor facilitated several workshops and seminars and made presentations at different fora on behalf of the Bank’s Management. Before joining the Bank of Ghana in April 2016, Dr. Christian Ahortor spent six and a half years at the West African Monetary Institute (WAMI) in Accra, Ghana. He joined WAMI as an Economist and rose to the position of Senior Economist, working in two
different departments – the Research Department and Multilateral Surveillance Department – concurrently. He served as the Country Economist for Ghana and Liberia and was part of several multilateral surveillance missions to Member States of the West African Monetary Zone (WAMZ). He also conducted several empirical studies on topical macroeconomic issues affecting the Zone and served as Assistant Editor for the West African Journal of Monetary and Economic Integration (WAJMEI). In addition, Dr. Ahortor served as the Project Manager/ Monitoring and Evaluation Specialist in charge of WAMI’s two-million-dollar capacity-building project that was funded by the African Capacity Building Foundation (ACBF). Under this project, WAMI in collaboration with WAIFEM organised several training programmes for its staff and officials of WAMZ Central Banks and Ministries of Finance and Economic Planning.
Prior to joining WAMI, Dr. Christian Ahortor was a lecturer at the Department of Economics, now the School of Economics, at the University of Cape Coast, Cape Coast,
Ghana. For three years, he delivered lectures at the master’s level in Microeconomics, Mathematical Modelling Techniques, and Econometric Modelling Techniques. He also
supervised six MPhil dissertations.
Dr. Ahortor’s immediate post-doctoral and pre-doctoral employment positions include Research Director at Glisten Strategic Solutions, Accra, Ghana; Principal Research
Assistant at ISSER, University of Ghana, Legon; Field Researcher for KPMG, Mathematics Tutor at Wesley Girls’ High School, Cape Coast, and Teacher at Salvation
Army Primary School, Adaklu-Abuadi, Ho, Ghana. Dr. Christian Regobeth Kofi Ahortor has 20 articles published in refereed journals, 3 articles published as book chapters, and several working and seminar papers to his credit. His research interests span wide areas, including monetary and exchange rate policies, monetary policy transmission mechanisms, fiscal and monetary policy
coordination, political business cycles and macroeconomic convergence, inflation and capital accumulation, remittances and economic growth, developmental roles of
central banks, threshold analysis of inflation and growth, determinants of capital and remittance flows, and multi-dimensional analysis of poverty.
He holds a PhD Degree in Economics with specialisation in International Economics and Financial Economics from the University of Ibadan, Ibadan, Nigeria, under the
Collaborative PhD Programme (CPP) in Economics sponsored by the African Economic Research Consortium (AERC). He also holds an MPhil Degree in Economics with
specialisation in Econometrics and Monetary Economics from the University of Ghana, Legon, under the Collaborative Master of Arts Programme (CMAP) in Economics
sponsored by AERC. In addition, Dr. Ahortor has meritorious concurrent awards of a Bachelor of Arts Degree in Economics with First Class Honours and a Diploma in
Education from the University of Cape Coast, Ghana.
He has participated in several professional training workshops on leadership and transition management, modernization of monetary policy operations and financial
market development, developing domestic debt and international capital markets, modelling and forecasting for policy analysis, debt sustainability analysis, external
vulnerabilities and policies, and building institutions to fight corruption, among others.
Dr. Ahortor is married and has three children